The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb — Volume 6 eBook

On July 21, 1827, is a letter to Mr. Dillon, whom
I do not identify, saying that Lamb has been teaching
Emma Isola Latin for the past seven weeks.

“Ass in praesenti.” This was
Boyer’s joke, at Christ’s Hospital (see
Vol. I. of this edition).

Here should come a letter from Lamb to Edward White,
of the India House, dated August 1, 1827, in which
Lamb has some pleasantry about paying postages, and
ends by heartily commending White to mind his ledger,
and keep his eye on Mr. Chambers’ balances.]

LETTER 421

CHARLES LAMB TO MRS. BASIL MONTAGU

[Summer, 1827.]

Dear Madam,—­I return your List with my
name. I should be sorry that any respect should
be going on towards [Clarkson,] and I be left out of
the conspiracy. Otherwise I frankly own that
to pillarize a man’s good feelings in his lifetime
is not to my taste. Monuments to goodness, even
after death, are equivocal. I turn away from Howard’s,
I scarce know why. Goodness blows no trumpet,
nor desires to have it blown. We should be modest
for a modest man—­as he is for himself.
The vanities of Life—­Art, Poetry, Skill
military, are subjects for trophies; not the silent
thoughts arising in a good man’s mind in lonely
places. Was I C[larkson,] I should never be able
to walk or ride near ------ again. Instead of
bread, we are giving him a stone. Instead of the
locality recalling the noblest moment of his existence,
it is a place at which his friends (that is, himself)
blow to the world, “What a good man is he!”
I sat down upon a hillock at Forty Hill yesternight—­a
fine contemplative evening,—­with a thousand
good speculations about mankind. How I yearned
with cheap benevolence! I shall go and inquire
of the stone-cutter, that cuts the tombstones here,
what a stone with a short inscription will cost; just
to say—­“Here C. Lamb loved his brethren
of mankind.” Everybody will come there
to love. As I can’t well put my own name,
I shall put about a subscription:

I scribble in haste from here, where we shall be some
time. Pray request Mr. M[ontagu] to advance the
guinea for me, which shall faithfully be forthcoming;
and pardon me that I don’t see the proposal in
quite the light that he may. The kindness of
his motives, and his power of appreciating the noble
passage, I thoroughly agree in.

With most kind regards to him, I conclude, Dear Madam,

Yours truly,
C. LAMB.

From Mrs. Leishman’s, Chase, Enfield.

A capital book, by the bye, but not over saleable.

[The memorial to Thomas Clarkson stands on a hill
above Wade Mill, on the Buntingford Road, in Hertfordshire.